Jim Cogan - Obituary
Jim
Cogan, Good Earth Trust's Founder and first Director, sadly passed
away on 27th September, 2007.
His obituary appeared in The Times newspaper on 18th October 2007.
Inspirational teacher at Westminster for 35 years who developed a second career promoting voluntary work in Africa.
An inspirational English teacher who became Undermaster at Westminster School, Jim Cogan also had a passion for Africa that prompted him to found charities, environmental initiatives and student volunteering schemes linking Britain to the Third World.
An acute sense of the yawning wealth gap between the West and Africa led Cogan to establish in 1985, while still at Westminster, Students Partnership Worldwide (SPW), one of the earliest gap-year schemes. This places young people during their pre-university year in Africa, India or Nepal to learn, teach and work in local communities. Cogan began the scheme for gap-year students, later broadening its remit to include graduates and volunteers from other Western countries, as well as from the host countries. The programme places special emphasis on Aids prevention in rural schools and also on environmental projects in remote villages. For these initiatives Cogan was appointed OBE in 2005.
Having relinquished control of SPW to a younger generation, Cogan turned his mind to fresh projects, including Alive and Kicking, a scheme to produce footballs stencilled with Aids-prevention messages in Africa. Hand-sewn from African leather, they are far more durable than imported plastic balls. Uefa has now bought 80,000 for free distribution to schools in 52 African countries. The scheme operates in Kenya and Zambia, and is about to begin operations in South Africa.
In Kenya and Uganda Cogan set up the Good Earth Trust, which promotes the manufacture of compressed interlocking soil blocks suitable for buildings, water cisterns, rain collection and irrigation; the blocks are inexpensive to produce, cured without wood burning and can be made in situ from hand-operated compressing machines.
In the UK he was also an active trustee of Changemakers, which enables some 20,000 youngsters each year to contribute positively to society. Cogan frequently visited his African enterprises to encourage, inspire, chivvy and to build on their successes. He died on the flight home from one such visit to Kenya.
James Atcheson Cogan was born in 1937 in Liverpool and educated at Liverpool College and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He did National Service in 1956-58 with the Royal Marines, later serving as a subaltern with the Army in Nigeria, where he first conceived his lasting passion for Africa.
After Oxford Cogan spent a short time with Booker McConnell in Jamaica before beginning a successful career in teaching at Rugby and continuing for the next 35 years at Westminster School. Cogan was at the cutting edge of the Westminster community, intellectually inspiring both pupils and his fellow teachers.
Former colleagues rated his teaching as "incomparable"
while pupils would discreetly tape-record his classes, which they
recall as "rollercoasters of deadpan irony and passionate polemic".
They would later replay Cogan's monologues amid gales of laughter,
but in private admit that he had inspired them. Under the headmastership
of John Rae, Cogan rose quickly to become Master of the Queen's
Scholars and Under Master (deputy headmaster). Despite a brief term
as acting head, Cogan decided that headmastering was not for him,
preferring to be in the thick of things.
A talented sportsman, Cogan ran the 1st XI cricket for many years.
With his wife Jenny he offered unstinting pastoral care to pupils,
helping many through difficulties and often taking groups walking
in the Lake District. Cogan's cast of mind was original, restless,
occasionally quirky. His charitable work sprang from a wish to give
to society more widely than he felt was possible through teaching
at Westminster. He was convinced that young people from the West
had much to learn from living and working among those whose lack
of material possessions seems so often to be coupled with enduring
dignity and generosity.
Cogan's friends will remember his gently mocking humour,
his fondness for provoking argument to unsettle the complacent,
his irrepressible urge to make a difference for the better, and
his abiding love of Shakespeare and Yeats.
Above all he was someone who demonstrated, with Jenny, how the family
at its best can be an anchor for, and spur to, action in the wider
community.
Cogan is survived by his wife, Jenny, whom he met while a schoolboy in Liverpool, and their four children.
Jim Cogan, teacher and social entrepreneur, was born on May 15,
1937.
He died of an embolism on September 27, 2007, aged 70.